Turkey, the European Union,, Russia, the PKK, and the future of a Kurdish nation

There is another oil issue in Central Asia which is causing as much difficulty for Turkey as Syria is.

Azerbaijan is building a pipeline from its oil fields to Italy,, which would  thwart Russia's position as the dominant supplier of oil to Europe.


For information on Azerbaijan's Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline referred to in the article see Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline - Wikipedia  (TANAP).  From Wikipedia:

Russia is said to have entered the Syrian conflict to stop Qatar from exporting natural gas from the Pars Field to Europe through Syria.

(Iran wants to export natural gas from the Pars field through Pakistan to India and China, so far blacked by the United States' threat of sanctions and its threat of withholding military aid to Pakistan, important to Pakistan because it perceives India as a mortal enemy.)

TheTANAP pipeline is a serious that to Russia, though not as serious as a Qatari pipeline would be, because Azerbaijan doesn't have reserves as large as the Pars field, which is the largest in the World.  

But TANAP would cut into Russia's oil sales to Europe and Russia can ill afford the loss.  

So Russia and he PKK, which is cutting Turkey,s oil lines, become natural allies. The United States is handed an opportunity to resolve the Ukraine dispute with Russia by siding with Russia and the PKK. 

If,  then, Turkey is "left with no friends but Saudi Arabia, Qatar and arguably Israel", as the al Monitor article, below, suggests, will the United State continue to support Syrian Kurds in their valiant war against the Islamic State, or will it yield to Saudi pressure, and side with Turkey?

What is important is the Kurdish determination to have their own nation, with access to the Sea.  That determination will decide  the outcome.  The United States should continue to side with the Kurds, even after the Islamic State is defeated, and Israel should abandon the Turks or be even further isolated from the international community.

For good reporting on Turkey's problems with PKK and the European Union, see The Guardian, A bombing: Kurdish militants claim responsibility, and Erdoğan's Turkey: a disintegrating ally and imaginary friend, both important articles for understanding Turkey, Syria, Russias, and the United States in the Middle East.

Author Ufuk Sanli Posted March 16, 2016

TURKEY PULSETürkçe okuyunTÜRKİYE'NİN NABZI

The Kurdistan Workers Party released a video on its official website Aug. 29, 2015, showing an attack on the Shah Deniz pipeline that transports natural gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey.  (photo by YOUTUBE/GlobalTVz)

How the PKK is entering energy wars

The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), denounced as a terrorist group by Turkey, last month inaugurated its first representative office abroad — in Moscow. A Kurdish speaker at the ceremony hailed the event as “a historic moment for the Kurdish people” before lauding his hosts: “Russia is a big power and a prominent actor in the Middle East. In fact, it’s not only an actor, but also a scriptwriter.”

The PYD is an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which sits even higher on Turkey's blacklist. Portraits of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan adorn the walls of the PYD office in Moscow, suggesting Turkey’s accusations are not baseless. Yet Russia clearly disagrees. Turkey’s Nov. 24 downing of a Russian military jet in Syria caused a dramatic rupture in ties, and the enraged government of Russian President Vladimir Putin had no scruples about embracing “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” strategy.

In the wake of the plane crisis, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his aides moved to accelerate projects to reduce Turkey’s dependence on Russian natural gas. Russia supplies 55% of the gas Turkey consumes, and Gazprom lists Turkey as its second-largest buyer after Germany.

For Turkey, the only quick alternative lies in the rich gas fields of neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan. With 5 trillion cubic meters (176 trillion cubic feet) of gas reserves, Iraqi Kurdistan whets the appetite of international investors and is eager to put its gas on the global market. Ankara’s game plan is simple: Begin building a pipeline this year, and get the gas flowing in 2019. Officials say the pipeline will have an initial capacity of 10 billion cubic meters a year, before a twofold increase in a short period of time.

That timing would be perfect, as some of Turkey’s major gas contracts with Russia expire in 2020, including the Blue Stream deal for 16 billion cubic meters, and half of the western route contracts that cover 4 billion cubic meters. In short, if everything goes as planned, Ankara hopes to get rid of Putin’s noose in several years.

Quickly rolling up its sleeves, Turkey collected bids for the Turkish section of the pipeline Feb. 9. In an intriguing coincidence, the PYD office in Moscow opened with fanfare the following day. And a week later, the Kurdistan Communities Union, the PKK's executive council, announced it would not allow the pipeline project to proceed. To show it meant business, the PKK leadership put on a little show of force. On Feb. 17, PKK militants blew up a Turkish section of the oil pipeline that ships Iraqi and Kurdish crude to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. The conduit, which carries 600,000 barrels of oil per day, remained closed for 23 days, dealing the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) a reported blow of $300 million and further shaking its already struggling economy.

This, however, was not the first attack on what is often described as the Iraqi Kurds’ “economic lifeline.” PKK militants had also bombed the pipeline on July 29, disrupting exports for 21 days — which cost the KRG $250 million.

According to Akin Unver, a scholar of international relations at Istanbul’s Kadir Has University, the PKK’s pipeline bombings are a calculated strategy. “The attacks aim to derail Turkey’s ambition of becoming an international energy hub,” he said. “An increase in these attacks would either discourage investors from projects via Turkey or push financing costs above the estimates.”

Unver’s point is indeed critical. To overcome its financial bottleneck, the KRG needs to put its natural gas on the market as soon as possible, along with its oil. So it now has two options: either make a deal with the PKK or look for other routes to export its gas and oil.

In another twist here, a new player — Iran — has stepped into the game. Last week, Tehran was reported to have offered the KRG a new pipeline via Iran to safely export its oil.

Meanwhile, the PKK is targeting another major energy project — the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), designed to carry Caspian gas to Europe via Turkey in a bid to reduce European reliance on Russia. The conduit is to carry 36 billion cubic meters of gas per year, of which 21 billion cubic meters will go to European countries. Construction began a year ago, and on July 30 the PKK attacked a freight train transporting construction materials for TANAP, killing a railway worker. Intriguingly, reports emerged the same day that Turkish-Russian talks on the Turkish Stream — a rival project to carry Russian gas to Europe — had been suspended.

The PKK also has targeted a pipeline that carries 6 billion cubic meters of Azeri gas to Turkey annually, via Georgia. The conduit was blown up twice in August. The 13-day interruption in the flow meant some $200 million in losses for Azerbaijan.

According to Fatih Ozbay, a scholar at Istanbul Technical University specializing in Russia, Ankara’s crisis with Moscow was a long-sought opportunity for the PKK. “The PKK leadership had long scrambled to enlist Russia’s support. The rupture between Ankara and Moscow handed them this opportunity on a silver plate,” he said.

Commenting also on Russia's thinking, he said, “For the Russians, energy means both money and power. While half of its federal budget revenues come from oil and gas sales, Russia sees energy also as an efficient diplomatic weapon and doesn’t hesitate to use it when necessary.

"The truth of the matter is that the Kremlin was already unhappy with the projects to carry gas from the Caspian and northern Iraq because they are bound to curb its influence over Turkey and the European Union. So the plane crisis came in very handy, providing the PKK with legitimacy and Russia with an opportunity of direct contact with the forces that could disrupt those projects.”

Whether Ankara can break free from Putin’s pincers depends on how the PKK problem in Turkey develops. In 2012, Erdogan managed to bring the PKK to the negotiating table, enlisting the support of the United States, Britain, the EU and Russia. Today, he is left with no friends but Saudi Arabia, Qatar and arguably Israel. He could hardly bring the PKK back to the table at a time when the Kurds — unlike him — enjoy strong Western sympathy for their fight against the Islamic State.

This stalemate has come to threaten not only Turkey’s national security but also its energy supplies. Any delay in the energy projects, meanwhile, means more money flowing to Russia’s coffers.

∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ 

China's dwindling control of North Korea; UN lack of control of China

Do you have better analysis of North Korea and its nuclear ambitions?  Of likely Chinese responses?

Would you like for the US to bomb North Korea? Do you think bombing would be effective?  If you do, wold you take responsibility for anticipated responses?  Have you an estimate of what those responses would be?

The New York Times

SIA PACIFIC | NEWS ANALYSIS

China Struggles for Balance in Response to North Korea’s Boldness

By JANE PERLEZ and CHOE SANG-HUNFEB. 7, 2016

Photo

The Chinese diplomat Wu Dawei, center, with Pak Song Il, right, of the North Korean Foreign Ministry, after arriving at Pyongyang Airport last week. 

BEIJING — When the veteran Chinese diplomat Wu Dawei left for North Korea last week, he probably knew he had been dispatched on mission impossible: to persuade the country’s young leader, Kim Jong-un, to climb down from his threat to launch a rocket as part of his quest to develop ballistic missile technologies.

Not only did Mr. Kim ignore China’s entreaties, sending Mr. Wu home empty-handed. He did so emphatically, ordering the launch a day earlier than expected so that it fell on one of China’s most important holidays, the eve of the Lunar New Year.

It is unclear how long President Xi Jinping of China will tolerate what some analysts here are calling the humiliation of his country at the hands of a capricious Mr. Kim. But there are no immediate signs that Beijing will radically change course and turn away from its traditional ally.Continue reading the main storyRELATED 

It’s a bad result, it’s a humiliation,” said Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor of international relations at Renmin University. “I think Kim Jong-un made many mistakes, and this is one of his major mistakes.” Even so, he added, “It’s hard to say what different approach China will take.”

North Korea said Sunday that the rocket had successfully put a satellite into orbit.South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said the launch indicated that North Korea had made some technological advances toward its assumed goal of pursuing an intercontinental ballistic missile. The satellite launched Sunday weighed 440 pounds, twice as heavy as a satellite launched in 2012, according to lawmakers who attended a closed briefing by the spy agency on Sunday.

The United Nations Security Council, at an emergency meeting Sunday requested by the United States andJapan, issued a statement signaling its intention to stiffen penalties against North Korea, but without saying how or when. A draft Security Council resolution is under negotiation, diplomats said. The key is what China will allow in terms of tightening or broadening sanctions.

Hours after the launch, the Chinese Foreign Ministry expressed “regret” and counseled calm and cautious action, a tone that drew immediate ridicule from users of the Chinese social media site, Weibo.

In contrast to calls from South Korea, Japan and the United States on Sunday for tougher sanctions against North Korea, China said early dialogue — meaning the resumption of talks among major powers and North Korea — was its preferred way to rein in Mr. Kim. Those negotiations, led by China and known as the six-party talks, fell apart in 2009 after North Korea walked out.

In response to the Foreign Ministry’s statement, one person on Weibo said: “I feel ‘regret’ for the Foreign Ministry.”

Another user said: “I have been racking my head but I simply can’t figure out why we have to offend everybody in the world to defend a rogue regime.”

Popular sentiment in China, where Mr. Kim has been maligned online as overweight, bumptious and inexperienced, appears to run against the government’s public patience with the North Korean leader. 

In a poll on Weibo conducted Friday and Saturday, two-thirds of the 8,000 respondents said they supported a strike by the United States to destroy North Korea’s nuclear weaponsprogram. Eighteen percent of those interviewed said they were against such a strike, and 16 percent said they were neutral.

In a telling signal of official disapproval of the results, Chinese censors had deleted the poll by Sunday afternoon.

Continue reading the main story

Despite its frustration with Mr. Kim and frosty personal relations — Mr. Xi has refused to meet with Mr. Kim — China will probably continue to put up with his behavior, said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University.

China is afraid of turning its recalcitrant ally into a worrisome enemy, he said.

The government has opposed severe sanctions aimed at curtailing the amount of oil that China exports to North Korea and at stopping imports of mineral resources. So far, China has supported only sanctions that limit the transfer or sale of military equipment or other items that would help North Korea’s weapons program.

“China thinks more severe sanctions will reduce China’s influence in North Korea,” Mr. Shi said.

Most important, China was afraid that hammering North Korea with heavy sanctions would turn it into a hostile country that could “take action” against Beijing, Mr. Shi said.

Mr. Xi has made the calculation that Mr. Kim, the third generation of the Kim family to rule North Korea, would be an enduring figure, and he sent Liu Yunshan, a member of the powerful Standing Committee of the Communist Party, to a military parade in Pyongyang last October to make a kind of rapprochement, Mr. Shi said.

China even appeared to be willing to risk its budding relationship with South Korea, an ally of the United States, by putting up with North Korea’s bad behavior.

The rocket launch on Sunday, which came after a fourth nuclear test by the North Koreans in early January, showed that China’s goal of maintaining good relationships with both North Korea and South Korea was an extremely difficult balancing act, Mr. Cheng said.

Mr. Xi has gone out of his way to court the South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, by stressing the strong economic relationship between the two countries. China is South Korea’s biggest trading partner, and Ms. Park raised eyebrows among Washington officials last September by turning up at a huge military parade on Tiananmen Square in Beijing that was boycotted by Western leaders.

Photo

Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and President Xi Jinping of China during their meeting in Beijing in January. 

CreditIn a move sure to displease China, South Korea’s Defense Department said hours after the launch Sunday that it would start formal discussions with the United States about the deployment of a missile defense system known as Thaad, for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense.

China has vigorously opposed the deployment of the system, arguing that it would be used by the United States to interfere with China’s defenses and as a tool to contain China.

The North Korean rocket launch “is aimed at advancing its nuclear weaponsand their delivery missiles,” Ms. Park said. “North Korea poses a grave challenge to the peace of Northeast Asia and the rest of the world by rejecting dialogue and persisting in advancing its missiles for the sake of regime survival.” 

Maj. Gen. Kim Yong-hyun, the head of operations at the South Korean military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, also said that Seoul and Washington had agreed that their annual joint springtime military exercises, code-named Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, would be the largest ever this year.

He said that South Korea would deploy more propaganda loudspeakers along the border with North Korea and operate them for longer hours. South Korea switched on the long-dormant loudspeakers after the January nuclear test, and North Korea responded by sending balloons into the South to drop propaganda leaflets and trash.

In recent years, South Korea has aggressively courted closer ties with China, hoping it would help tame North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

The mood shifted in South Korea, however, after the nuclear test in January. China, North Korea’s only major trading partner, rejected repeated South Korean and American demands that it force the North to give up its nuclear-missile program by squeezing oil and other shipments.

President Obama and Mr. Xi spoke by telephone last week about the need for unified action regarding sanctions at the United Nations, the White House said.

But the agreement between the two leaders in California in 2013, when cooperation on finding a solution to the North Korea dilemma was the high point of their meeting, appears to have evaporated.

When Secretary of State John Kerry held more than four hours of talks with the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, last month in Beijing, there was little enthusiasm for more targeted sanctions by the Chinese, even though both sides knew that a rocket launch was likely to happen, American officials said.

“The general relationship between the United States and China is far from good, and I don’t think the U.S. has any real bargaining chips with China over North Korea,” Mr. Shi said. “The vital interest of the United States is to reduce the nuclear weapons, and the vital interest of China is to keep a minimum degree of stability and to keep North Korea a friend.”

Under various Security Council resolutions, North Korea is banned from rocket launches using ballistic missile technology. But it has touted its missiles and nuclear weapons as the “sacred sword” its people have long sought to deter American invasions. On Sunday, it called the satellite “a gift of most intense loyalty” for Mr. Kim.

Differing views on start of talks with Iran

From the Tehran Times:

Iran enters Istanbul talks with constructive approach

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili, arrived in Istanbul on Friday to resume negotiations with the 5+1 group (the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany). 

[The iranian negotiator] held separate talks with Chinese Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Ma Zhaoxu and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov in Istanbul on Friday.  

During his meeting with the Chinese official, Bagheri said that Iran will present new initiatives in the talks with the major powers and “has entered the talks with a constructive approach.”

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili 

 and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton

 From the Jerusalem Post:

LONDON - Iran is concealing the destination of its oil sales by disabling tracking systems aboard its tanker fleet, making it difficult to assess how much crude Tehran is exporting as it seeks to counter Western sanctions aimed at cutting its oil revenues.

Iranian oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz

From the Associated Press:

ISTANBUL (AP) — After years of failure, Iran and the six world powers may finally make some progress on nuclear negotiations when they meet again Saturday if each side shows willingness to offer concessions the other seeks.

But even if the two sides find enough common ground, they may have a tougher time in any potential second round. That's when the six powers will likely seek further commitments from Tehran to reduce fears that it could use its uranium enrichment program to make the fissile core of nuclear missiles.

Iran has proposed Baghdad as a possible venue for a second round and a European diplomat said Friday the six could agree to meet there in May if there were enough progress in Istanbul.

Istanbul

Bagdad, our legacy

From the Arab News:

By AP ISTANBUL: After years of failure, Iran and the six world powers may finally make some progress on nuclear negotiations when they meet again Saturday if each side shows willingness to offer concessions the other seeks

From the Moscow Times [If you can make your way through this article -- it talks about places and events that may be unfamiliar to you -- you will learn a lot about why War with Iran is a very bad idea, from Moscow's perspective.  Moscow's perspective is not to be weighed lightly:  Russia still has enough nuclear weapons to destroy all life on earth.]

Iran War Threat Rattles Nerves in Caucasus

12 April 2012

By Nikolaus von Twickel

When the world's major powers gather in Istanbul on Saturday for crucial talks with Tehran on its nuclear program, Moscow's negotiators will have extra motivation to avoid a war.

An Israeli attack on Iran would not only send shock waves throughout the Gulf region and the Islamic world, it would also have unpredictable consequences on the South Caucasus, long regarded by Moscow as Russia's own backyard.

You can see why Russia would be interested.

Some experts are warning that a war with Iran carries the risk of reigniting the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani breakaway province controlled by Armenian separatists, and even precipitate a war between Russia and Georgia.

While those voices are a clear minority, few dispute that the region, awash with unresolved ethno-territorial conflicts, remains a powder keg. And the ratcheting up of tensions over Iran has already spilled over into Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.

Earlier this week, Iran's Intelligence Ministry announced that it had arrested an Israeli-backed terrorist group whose headquarters lay in another country in the region.

The ministry did not name the country, but most observers pointed to Azerbaijan. The country has been described as a potential staging ground for an Israeli attack on Iran in a controversial article published by the U.S. magazine Foreign Policy last month, which claimed that Baku has granted Israel access to air bases on its territory.

Ali Hasanov, a senior official in Azerbaijan's presidential administration, denied the report, saying "foreign circles" were using the tensions over Iran to sow discord between both countries, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported.

But Baku has seen a host of suspicious incidents recently. Earlier in March, police arrested 22 individuals whom they accused of being hired by Iran to stage terror attacks against Israeli and American targets.

Those arrests came on the heels of a report in January that Azerbaijan had uncovered an Iranian plot to kill the Israeli ambassador in Baku.

On Thursday, Azerbaijan's National Security Ministry said it had arrested a group of more than eight Azeri and Iranian citizens suspected of smuggling arms and drugs into the country.

 Yerevan, the capital of Armenia

Armenians take their football seriously, as does all the world, nearly

 

 

The ghost town of Agdam,

 its inhabitants driven away and

 its football team drafted into somebody's army.

  I don know enough about the conflict

 between Armenia and Azerbaijan 

to have a favorite. 

The still-honored football team of Aaagdam 

Deepening ties between Israel and predominantly Muslim Azerbaijan were highlighted in February when it emerged that Baku had bought arms worth $1.6 billion from the Jewish state. Analysts have said the deal has little to do with Iran and a lot with Baku's drive to equip its military for a potential war over Nagorno-Karabakh.

But a shadow of doubt was cast over this explanation by a media report last week that said the arms purchase included Gabriel anti-ship missiles, which Azerbaijan will use to protect its Caspian Sea coast from Iranian warships.

Tehran has also accused Baku of supporting Israeli-trained assassination squads targeting Iranian scientists, an accusation the Azeri government called slander.

And in February, Baku lawmakers called for changing the country's name to "North Azerbaijan," suggesting that the 16 million ethnic Azeris who live to the south in northern Iran are in need of liberation.

All this already makes for a lot of trouble in Iranian-Azeri neighborly ties, but by bringing in Armenia, Georgia, the United States and Russia, the picture becomes more dramatic.

Armenia, the region's staunchest Russian ally, is dependent on supply routes through Georgia and Iran because it has no ties with Azerbaijan and Turkey, its other two neighbors.

Earlier this month an Armenian analyst warned that Azerbaijan might launch an attack on Nagorno-Karabakh because it calculates that Iran would close its border with Armenia and Georgia would not let Russian aid pass through its territory.

"They understand that and can use that in case of a war over Iran, Sarkis Astaryan was quoted as saying by the Panarmenian.net site.

Meanwhile, Georgian officials warn of a new war with Russia, citing Moscow's announcement to hold large-scale military exercises in the North Caucasus in September.

Giga Bokeria, the secretary of Tbilisi's national security council, argued that the Caucasus 2012 exercises will include Russian troops stationed in Georgia's breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Speaking on Ekho Moskvy, he suggested that Moscow wants to achieve regime change in Georgia "finishing what it started in 2008," when Russia and Georgia fought a brief war over South Ossetia.

Military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer went further by arguing that the planned exercise is intended to counter any U.S. involvement in a war with Iran.

And Georgian opposition figures have suggested that a series of newly constructed provincial hospitals was financed by the United States and part of a covert campaign to ready the country for war.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin has said the fuss about the exercise was inappropriate.

But analysts told The Moscow Times that risks over Karabakh and in Georgia are so high, that no side would dare fire a shot, lest they set off a devastating war.

"A war over Iran would destabilize the whole South Caucasus," said Alexander Krylov, of the Institute of the World Economy and International Relations.

He argued that Russia's North Caucasus exercises do not mean that war is imminent. Rather, he said, they could "cool the heads of regional leaders and demonstrate stability."

Krylov also strongly argued against the possibility of an Azeri attack on Karabakh, saying it would jeopardize the country's precarious foreign policy position.

"Nobody would support them, not even Turkey," Krylov said. 


A former ambassador from a major western country to Azerbaijan, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, agreed that Azeri President Ilham Aliyev was a "clever man" who will do everything to maintain a foreign policy strategy of "quadrilateral balance between Russia, Iran, Turkey and the West."

"Right now they are very busy telling the Iranians that they pose no threat to Tehran's security," the ex-ambassador said.

He added that a war between Israel and Iran would only upset this balance.

Others said both Azerbaijan and Armenia would suffer considerably from a war over Iran because it would bring Baku's lucrative oil exports to a halt, while stopping Yerevan's crucial oil imports from Iran.

Ben Judah, a Caucasus expert at the European Council of Foreign Relations think tank said Israel currently imports a third of its oil from Azerbaijan, which flows via pipelines through Georgia to the Black Sea.

"War with Iran would leave Baku vulnerable," he said in a telephone interview from London

Particularly interesting to me, because "North-Azerbaijan", with the hyphen, as it is written in the Tehran Times, is a successful manufacturing province in northern Iran, and it and its millions of inhabitants would be blasted, twisted, decapitated, harmed by War with Iran; and Azerbaijan is friends with the US, or at least with our major oil companies.:

And in February, Baku [the Capital of Azerbaijan] lawmakers called for changing the country's name to "North Azerbaijan," suggesting that the 16 million ethnic Azeris who live to the south in northern Iran are in need of liberation.

Tabriz, the capital of the Iranian Province of Noth-Azeerbaijan

Countryside we might need to destroy, should we War with Iran

 Does the World need this?

Anticipating consequences of War with Iran

The New York Times, today:

Western powers “know that Iran is not after nuclear weapons, but their intention of creating such a commotion is to stonewall Iran’s progress and damage Iran’s reputation among Muslim countries,” Mr.[Ali] Larijani,, a former chief nuclear negotiator, was quoted as saying.  

Mr. Larijani, a philosopher and politician, is one of the two representatives of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to the Iranian Security Council,  In his post as secretary he effectively functioned as the top negotiator on issues of national security, including Iran's nuclear program.

Well, perhaps we in the West are interested in stonewalling Iran’s progress and damaging its reputation. We have been at it for 60 years.  The Iran-Pakistan Pipeline controversy shows that we still are, I’m saddened to say.  See, e.g., my March 6, 2012, post in The Newspaper Spoon.

More important, “Israeli officials” are quoted by the Times as urging a “credible military option,” which seems merely being to drop a few bombs on Iran, as Israel did on Syria, with no adverse consequence except, er, a war with Hezbollah and bombs raining down on Israel’s population (and, by the way, substantial harm to Lebanon, but who cares?).

It seems to me that the burden on the Bomb-Dropper advocate is to detail the worst-case consequences of the dropping.  The silence on that subject drowns out all other comment.

Saddam Hussein thought that he could win a quick victory over Iran when he invaded in 1980.  Iran was in confusion after the overthrow of the Sash.  The war  lasted eight years, cost half-a-million dead and many more wounded, wrecked both countries’ economy, and did not result in the hoped-for border changes.

Images of the Iraq-Iran War:

Bushco thought that a War with Iraq would be a “walk in the park"; that “Shock and Awe”  -- dropping more than a few bombs -- would quickly bring the enemy to its knees. Our present national debt and the occupants of Walter Reed Hospital are a continuing tribute to that folly.  See the February 5, 2012, post in The Newspaper Spoon.

President Obama knows some of the consequences of Bombing Iran.  I’m sure his intelligence services  and the Israeli counterparts have detailed worst-case consequences.  

Before the Bombs drop, those consequences and the consequences of “allowing" Iran to get the Bomb must be made public so the American public, the Israeli public, and the Western, Azerbaijani, Russian, Chinese, Afghan, Pakistani publics can know, too.  Dropping Bombs is now a World concern, not just a concern of one or three national interests.  Wouldn’t the Kazakhs be affected?  Of course they would.  The Brazilians too?  Show my how they wouldn’t.

”We have a mighty country and a strong army,” Mr.[Benjamin] Netanyahu said after he returned Wednesday. “We have many friends who stand by our side and who will stand by our side at all times.”

Show me the consequences," I say, "Then perhaps I'll stand with you."

So say I.  How say you?


For pictures, maps, Turkish oil wrestling, and Kazakh horse wrestling . . .